To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Discussion questions

  1. How do Scout, Jem, and Dill characterize Boo Radley at the beginning of the book? In what way did Boo’s past history of violence foreshadow his method of protecting Jem and Scout from Bob Ewell? Does this repetition of aggression make him more or less of a sympathetic character?
  2. In Scout’s account of her childhood, her father Atticus reigns supreme. How would you characterize his abilities as a single parent? How does he treat Calpurnia and Tom Robinson vis à vis his treatment of his white neighbors and colleagues? How would you typify his views on race and class in the larger context of his community and his peers?
  3. How does Atticus Finch quietly protest Jim Crow laws even before Tom Robinson’s trial? Why does he risk his reputation, his friendships, and his career to take the case? Does he risk too much by putting his children in harm’s way?
  4. The title of the book is alluded to when Atticus gives his children air rifles and tells them they can shoot all the bluejays they want, but “It’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.” At the end of the novel, Scout likens the “sin” of naming Boo as Bob Ewell’s killer to “shootin’ a mockingbird.”Is Boo Radley the only innocent, or mockingbird, in this novel? Who else plays that part?
  5. Scout ages two years, from six to eight, over the course of the book, which is narrated from her perspective as an adult. Is the account her narrator provides believable? Were there incidents or observations in the book that seemed unusually knowing for such a young child? What events or episodes in Scout’s story truly capture her personality?
  6. What does Jem learn when Atticus forces him to read to Mrs. Dubose as a punishment? Why does the lawyer regard this woman as the “bravest person” he ever knew?
  7. Since their mother is dead, several women — Calpurnia, Miss Maudie, and Aunt Alexandra — function as mother figures to Scout and Jem. How do these three women influence Scout’s growing understanding of what it means to be a Southern “lady”?
  8. Jem describes to Scout the four “folks” or classes of people in Maycomb County: “…our kind of folks don’t like the Cunninghams, the Cunninghams don’t like the Ewells, and the Ewells hate and despise the colored folks.”How does Lee explore race and class in 1930s Alabama? What significance, if any, do these characterizations have for people living in other parts of the world?
  9. One of the chief criticisms of To Kill a Mockingbird is that the two central storylines — Scout, Jem, and Dill’s fascination with Boo Radley and the trial of Tom Robinson for attacking Mayella Ewell — are not sufficiently connected in the novel. Is Lee successful in incorporating these different stories? Were you surprised at the way in which these story lines were resolved?
  10. By the end of To Kill a Mockingbird, the book’s first sentence — “When he was thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow” — has been explained and resolved. Why does the adult Scout begin her narrative with Jem’s broken arm and a brief family history?
  11. Was there any foreshadowing that Bob Ewell would try to injure Scout or Jem? What did you think about Boo Radley’s last-minute intervention when Ewell attacked the children after the Halloween pageant? Was it believable that he would come to their aid?
  12. Why did Harper Lee choose as her novel’s epigraph this quote from Charles Lamb: “Lawyers, I suppose, were children once”?
  13. How does the town of Maycomb function as a character with its own personality, rather than merely as a backdrop for events?
  14. The novel takes place during the Great Depression. How do class divisions and family quarrels highlight racial tensions in Maycomb?
  15. Atticus believes that to understand life from someone else’s perspective, we must “walk in his or her shoes.” From what other perspectives does Scout see her fellow townspeople?
  16. Atticus teaches Scout that compromise is not bending the law, but “an agreement reached by mutual consent.” Does Scout apply or reject this definition of compromise? What are examples of her obedience to and defiance of this principle?What do Scout and Jem learn and how do they change in the course of the narrative?
  17. To Kill a Mockingbird has been challenged by the political left and right, who have sought to remove it from libraries for its ungrammatical speech; portrayal of conflict between children and adults; references to sex, the supernatural, and witchcraft; and an unfavorable presentation of African Americans. Which elements of the book touch on controversial issues today? Which elements are especially troubling, persuasive, or insightful?

About the author

Harper Leewas born in Monroeville, Alabamain 1926, the youngest of four children. Her father, a former newspaper editor and proprietor, was a lawyer who also served on the state legislature from 1926 to 1938. As a child, Lee was a tomboy and a precocious reader, and enjoyed the friendship of schoolmate and neighbor Truman Capote.(She assisted Capote with research for his best-selling bookIn Cold Blood before her own book was published.)

She earned a bachelor’s degree and studied law (but did not earn a law degree) at the University of Alabama, writing for student publications and spending a summer studying in Oxford, England. She moved to New York in 1950 and worked as a reservation clerk with Eastern Air Lines and British Overseas Airways Corporationuntil the late 1950s.In December 1956her friends Michael Brown and Joy Williams Browngave her a Christmas gift of a year’s wages to encourage her to write.

Published in 1960, To Kill a Mockingbird won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1961. In 1999, it was voted “Best Novel of the Century” in a poll conducted by the Library Journal. Lee highly praised the 1962 film version ofthe book,which won Oscars for Best Actor Gregory Peck, who portrayed Atticus Finch; Best Adapted Screenplay by Horton Foote; and Best Art Direction.

In 1966 Lee was named to the National Council on the Artsby President Lyndon B. Johnson and in 2007 she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. She livesin Monroeville and her second novel, Go Set a Watchman, is scheduled for publication in July 2015.